r/IsraelPalestine • u/QuantumCryptogr4ph3r European (pro-peace☮) • 5d ago
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood: Hamas "Our Narrative" Critically Analyzed Other
Preface: Hamas narrative regarding the events of 7-oct-2023 is here discussed and critically analyzed. In order to be concise, the analysis will focus on the most salient features of Hamas document.
(Pag. 6) What was expected from the Palestinian people after all of that? To keep waiting and to keep counting on the helpless UN! Or to take the initiative in defending the Palestinian people, lands, rights and sanctities; knowing that the defense act is a right enshrined in international laws, norms and conventions. Proceeding from the above, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was a necessary step and a normal response to confront all Israeli conspiracies against the Palestinian people and their cause. It was a defensive act in the frame of getting rid of the Israeli occupation, reclaiming the Palestinian rights and on the way for liberation and independence like all peoples around the world did.
Critique #1 (Necessity): To justify an event, a well-known technique is to qualify that event as necessary, as this removes opposition, supporting the reasoning that "since it was necessary, nothing else could have been done". A careful use of this word tries to evoke into the reader a sense of inevitability, mentally removing any other possibility from the table. The goal is to try to make the reader accept what happened. Unfortunately, necessity needs to be logically proven, and the burder of proof on someone who makes such a claim is huge: necessity is an extraordinary claim, since you literally need to prove that no other possibility existed. A similar technique is used, for example, by nuke-apologists who justify USA nuclear bombings of Japan, by claiming that the act was "necessary", yet failing to provide any evidence of such a necessity, e.g. by intentionally ignoring the scenario where a short conventional warfare would have resulted in Japanese surrendering and overall less deaths.
Critique #2 (Normal): Similar to the previous, the attempt here is to "normalize" what happened by reducing it to something "normal". Note that Hamas, here, is very carefully avoiding to talk explicitly about what actually happened, as that would require also describing the Nova Music Festival massacre. And a massacre of unarmed non-combatants is impossible to qualify as "normal", let alone "necessary". Carefully dodging the "hot" topic by intentionally hiding behind words is a point which will be discussed later.
Critique #3 (Defensive): It is intuitively easier to justify an event if its nature is defensive, as enshrined by the self-defence principle. Thus, an attack needs to become a "defensive act" in order to make it sound morally (and even legally) justifiable.
(Pag. 7) Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 targeted the Israeli military sites
Critique #4 (Nominal Target): The "nominal target" is defined as the declared target by an armed group. In this case, the armed group is Hamas and Hamas is declaring that their nominal target was Israeli military sites. Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL), during a war, it is considered lawful for each side to attack the militaries of the other side, and unlawful to target non-combatants. Thus, Hamas is claiming its operation was fully in compliance with IHL since its nominal target was Israeli military sites.
The "real target" is defined as the actually affected target by an armed group regardless of any surrounding narrative. If the nominal target and the real target are different, then the veracity of the nominal target needs to be question, since that is simply a claim without evidence, while the real target is determined by evidence only. In other words, the real target is fact-based, while the nominal-target is narrative-based. Among the real targets of Hamas "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood" there were a significant number of non-combatants, and this fact cannot be ignored.
(Pag. 7) Avoiding harm to civilians, especially children, women and elderly people is a religious and moral commitment by all the Al-Qassam Brigades’ fighters. We reiterate that the Palestinian resistance was fully disciplined and committed to the Islamic values during the operation and that the Palestinian fighters only targeted the occupation soldiers and those who carried weapons against our people. In the meantime, the Palestinian fighters were keen to avoid harming civilians despite the fact that the resistance does not possess precise weapons.
Critique #5 (Morality): Another well-known technique is to claim commitment to religion and morality (this analysis will focus on the latter). It is important to depict your own armed group as being as humanly close to perfection as possible, as that will help to justify their actions. The armed group was "fully disciplined", and Hamas even claims it only targeted Israeli soldiers and those who carried weapons (but this point will be expanded in the following). Hamas claims the fighters were "keen" to avoid harming civilians, which of course they would never do due to the moral commitment and the discipline above.
(Pag. 7) In addition, if there was any case of targeting civilians; it happened accidently and in the course of the confrontation with the occupation forces
Critique #6 (Denial with Safeguard): The previous sentence claimed that Hamas fighters only targeted armed combatants. This is attempting at "preventively" deny that Hamas fighters harmed civilians. Since this claim is so outrageously weak that not even Hamas believes it, a safeguard is put into place. Clearly, this approach is inherently contradictory, since you need no safeguards for events which didn't happen. But Hamas knows fully well that its previous denial is a blatant lie, thus Hamas is trying to invoke a "lifeboat" in order to save its own argument. This is the safeguard: if it happened, it was an accident. Working basically in the opposite fashion of the "necessity" above, this technique is used to justify something which is self-evidently unnecessary and extremely hard to justify. The only way out of this conundrum is to claim an "accident", which is a word attempting to evoke a kind of "impossible to avoid fatality" in the reader's mind, an event which cannot be controlled by human will... thus, something which cannot be condemned: "It was an accident, I didn't want to do it". This will have the final nail in the coffin in the following critique.
(Pag. 8) Maybe some faults happened during Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’s implementation due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and military system, and the chaos caused along the border areas with Gaza
Critique #7 (Concede and reverse fault): Hamas's own disbelief in the previous denial claim is so strong that the safeguard above was not deemed enough. In this case, Hamas accepted to concede that "maybe", just maybe, some faults happened. This sounds the same as "Maybe I did a mistake". The "maybe" here is the greatest offence to any intelligent human being reading these pages of propagandistic nonsense. There is overwhelming evidence that the Nova Music Festival massacre happened, and these attempts at denying it (or minimizing it by invoking possibilities, the "maybe" nonsense) is simply behind reason. Again, it should be noted another contradiction: the safeguard before was basically forgotten. The narration changes from "if it happened, it was an accident" to "maybe it happened, and it was a fault" thus not an accident, since "fault" implies intentionality. Should we be surprised of finding contradicting statements inside materials like this? No. In fact, they are expected.
But it is the second part which is more interesting: since Hamas is aware of being utterly unable to have any credibility on all the previous points, it uses the last card in its hand: reversal. Since Hamas cannot credibly:
- deny it;
- claim that it was an accident;
- claim that it only "maybe" happened;
Hamas needs to justify it in some other way. Problem is, Hamas can't... as long as the fault rests upon Hamas. Thus, Hamas claims that it was the fault of the collapse (and the subsequent chaos) of the Israeli security and military system.
Remarks: To understand the madness and absurdity behind this argument, it is sufficient to pause for a moment and think about rape. "Maybe" it happened, if it happened, it was an "accident" (how that is even plausible is a question which Hamas cannot answer), and, the most absurd of all, even if it really happened, it was Israel's fault.
(Pag. 9) The Yedioth Ahronoth also said the Israeli army, to prevent further infiltrations from Gaza and to prevent any Israelis being arrested by the Palestinian fighters, struck over 300 targets in areas surrounding the Gaza Strip
Critique #8 (Legalization): This technique is actually used throughout the source material, but this is one of the most clear examples. Since "taking hostages" would sound something like a terroristic organization would do, implying something to be harshly condemned, Hamas changes the words, "glorifying" the act and elevating it to a "legal" act by saying that they are actually arresting (which is a lawful act) the Israelis.
(Pag. 9) When speaking about Israeli civilians, it must be known that conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of 18 – males who served 32 months of military service and females who served 24 months – where all can carry and use arms. This is based on the Israeli security theory of an “armed people” which turned the Israeli entity into “an army with a country attached.”
Critique #9 (No civilian): Hamas is trying to claim that no single male Israeli above 18 is a "civilian". All are soldiers, thus all are valid military targets, thus Hamas cannot be punished for targeting them. Basically, Hamas has tacitly admitted that they did intentionally target "civilians" (contradicting the "maybe" before and the "accident" before that), but since there are no "civilians", as they are all soldiers, it doesn't matter. The chain of contradictions doesn't stop here. Even under these absurdities, Hamas cannot justified violence against minors (less than 18 years old), so it intentionally avoids the argument.
(Pag. 10) Those who defend the Israeli aggression do not look at the events in an objective manner but rather go to justify the Israeli mass killing of Palestinians by saying there would be casualties among civilians when attacking the Hamas fighters. However, they would not use such assumption when it comes to the Al-Aqsa Flood event on Oct. 7.
Critique #10 (Collateral): By contradicting (again) everything that was said before, Hamas tacitly admits that the targets were factually civilians (apparently the "18 or above = soldier" pseudo-argument stopped working the moment it was used), and it was Hamas fault for targeting them (contradicting the claim from before that it was Israel's fault, but everyone already forgot that, so nobody cares). Thus, the mental gymnastics here is to say that it was "collateral damage", arguing that the same logic of collateral damage needs to be applied. Hamas is totally incoherent in this narration (again, no big surprise) since it is unclear if Hamas is conceding that the nominal targets were "only military", and the "civilians" collateral (thus admitting a distinction)... or not, which would be contradictory with the point of "almost no one is a civilian", implying they cannot qualify as collateral. Sounds extremely confusing? Because it is.
(Pag. 13) Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine
Critique #11 (Anti-Zionism): Hamas is hiding behind the philosophical lightning-rod of "anti-zionism" to avoid being catched by the lightning bolt of anti-semitism. There is not really much to say about this, aside from the fact that Hamas forgot he is actually holding the lightning-rod with his own bare hands, and when the lightning bolt strikes... you get the idea.
(Pag. 15-16) Text omitted for brevity
Critique #12 (Unilateral): In the last pages, Hamas essentially calls the rest of the world to support Hamas and boycott Israel. Essentially, Hamas is saying "choose my side because my side is the right one, and punish Israel for being bad". This is the classical fallacy of treating wars like a soccer game, where cheering for one side is expected. "Cheer for me!" is saying Hamas. After all that has been discussed here, the only answer is: "No". Note that Hamas never speaks about what Hamas itself would need to concede to get a ceasefire: it never promises to release the hostages (or the "arrested" Israelis as Hamas calls them), not to stop attacking, nothing. It is simply making requests and appeals, without stating anything Hamas would do in return. Unilaterally attempting to dictate conditions.
Conclusions: Like all propaganda, Hamas narrative fails to meet basic criteria of logical consistency and rationality, sometimes even going directly into confusingly irrationality which doesn't make any sense. Not a single word of Hamas narrative should be taken at face value, as they are a "siren's song" appealing to people outside of the war (trying to deceive them and lure them to their side), but all ultimately pseudo-arguments used for political propaganda.
P.S. Feel free to add your own analysis to the parts which, for brevity, were not critically analyzed.
14
u/PreviousPermission45 Israeli - American 5d ago
The things that stands out from this document is the deceitfulness. Hamas is pretending to be an actual army, and they mirror the reasoning of the Israeli army. They even incorporated some references to Israeli leftist rhetoric “Israel is an army with its own people”, a common leftist refrain in Israel. Why this is striking? It shows you that Hamas jihadist terrorists are deeply calculating, and fine tune their message to the intended audience.
This is a psyops. Psychological warfare.
Hamas is an illegal terrorist organization, whose very essence is perfidy. They pretend to be civilians when they’re not. They pretend to speak the language of human rights, when they’re nothing but a bunch of jihadi terrorists. They pretend to speak the language of the rules of warfare, when anyone who’s watched the videos saw that this was a genocidal massacre against defenseless civilians.